Paul and Lucy Spadoni periodically live in Tuscany to explore Paul’s Italian roots, practice their Italian and enjoy “la dolce vita.”
All work is copyrighted and may not be reprinted without written permission from the author, who can be contacted at www.paulspadoni.com

Thursday, September 15, 2016

Ironically Facebook has de-activated me for pretending to be myself while reporting other fake accounts

Facebook
has de-activated my account because I was pretending to be myself,
which “goes against the Facebook Community Standards.” That
sounds a little weird, but that’s exactly what has happened.

My
downfall started earlier this year, when a Facebook user from France
contacted me to tell me that someone with an account using the name Robert
Spadoni (my middle name) befriended her, using some of my photos in
his profile. Robert convinced her that he was a trustworthy family
man, she said, and then he defrauded her out of a lot money on a fake
art deal. She realized that I had nothing to do with the scam, but
she said she wanted to make me aware of what had happened and hoped
that I could help her get the scammer’s Facebook account shut down.

I
wrote to Facebook, and the reply said I should contact “Robert
Spadoni” and ask him to stop using my photos. Nothing in the reply
spoke to the woman’s claim to have been scammed. “Robert” gave
a very short reply saying he would remove my photos. I didn’t elaborate on the French woman’s claims because I didn’t think it would
help, and she really hadn't given me any details on how the scam had
worked. But it did prompt me to do a Facebook search for other people
who might be using my name or photos.

I
found 11 profiles using my full name, Paul Robert Spadoni, and all of
them had every indication of being fake. They had few or no friends,
they had either no photos or few photos in their albums, and most had
no posts or comments. They did have profile photos and list
occupations, but a quick check showed that the organizations they
worked for did not actually exist. Two of them were supposedly in the
U.S. Army. They showed head and shoulders shots of nice looking men
in a military uniform. I did an image search of the men and found that
one was actually Aaron Ramos, who is described in a youtube video as “the most abused U.S. Soldier on the Internet about stolen
identity and abused pic.” The poor guy has had his photos used in
hundreds of fake accounts that attempt to befriend and then defraud
people. The other is Harold Greene, a general who was killed in the war in Afganistan in 2014.I
assumed that the person or persons who created all the accounts
eventually intended to use them in the same way that a scammer had
used the Robert Spadoni account but just hadn’t gotten around to
adding more photos and soliciting friends. Finally about two weeks
ago, I had some free time while sitting in front of my computer and
decided to report nine of the accounts using my name. I left out the
two that had no profile photos or job data.I
received the following auto reply from Facebook:"Hi
Paul,We'll
let you know when we've reviewed the profile you reported for
pretending to be someone they're not. If it goes against one of our
Community Standards, we'll remove it or follow up with them.Thanks,
The Facebook Team"Three
of the fake accounts have been removed, but six are still there,
including the ones with the photos of Aaron Ramos and Harold Greene. Then, two days
later, I tried to log in to my Facebook account and received this
message: “Your account has been disabled for pretending to be
someone else. If
you think we made a mistake, please reply to this message with a
government-issued ID so we can confirm that this is your account.”I
laughed at the irony and sent a scan of my passport and driver’s
license, thinking that all would soon be cleared up. Three days later
I received a reply: “Thanks for sending your ID. To complete this
ID verification, we need you to reply to this email and attach a
photo of yourself holding your government-issued ID. Please make sure
that we can clearly see your face in both the photo and the ID.
Thanks in advance for your understanding of this security policy.
Luca, Community Operations”I
took a selfie while I held up my drivers license and sent it to
Facebook. Four days have passed without a response. I’ve now been
off Facebook for nearly two weeks, and I do miss seeing new photos of
my grandkids, neighbor Sherrie’s sunset photos and other status
updates from friends. I can’t communicate with some of my friends
in Italy because we use Facebook to message each other. A couple of
times Lucy has said something like, “Oh, did you see that so-and-so
had her baby,” or “You saw that post about the Smiths in Italy,
right?” Then she sees my scowl: “Oh, that’s right, you’re not
on Facebook any more. I forgot.”I
suppose Facebook has more important things to do than look at my
messages and restore my account, since they have some 2 billion
active users. I’ve also read that Facebook itself estimates that
83 million of its accounts are fake. But I have to wonder why they
took the time to de-activate my account, which had hundreds of family
photos, status updates and comments from friends. And why they would
allow a profile that uses a photo that is already famous for being
used fraudulently. I know Facebook is a sophisticated service with complex algorithms lying below the surface to govern how it works,
but even if it operates pretty much on auto pilot, you’d think the
actual pilots would look up once in a while to see that its real
customers and fans don’t get run over.-------------------Update: After 17 days, my account was restored, with no explanation or apologies. The fake accounts are still there.

2 comments:

That is screwed up! It pisses me off when things like that happen. It's a HUGE problem on youtube as well with accounts being in danger of false copyright infringement claims/DMCAs. Users are penalized even if the claims are demonstrably false and invalid. After 3 strikes, the accounts can be deleted, and just like with you, communication with actual people at youtube is scarce and brief

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First off, before you hassle me about our title, Lucy thought of it. Yes, I know some people may think broad is derogatory, but the etymology is uncertain and she doesn’t find it offensive, and it made me laugh. We have been married since 1974 and are empty-nesters now, which allows me to bring my submerged Italophilia into the open. We first came to live in Italy from February-April in 2011 and have returned during the same months every year. From 2011-2015, we lived in San Salvatore, at the foot of the hilltop city Montecarlo, where my paternal grandparents were born, raised and, in 1908, married. In late 2015, we bought a home in Montecarlo. We come for a variety of purposes: We want to re-establish contact with distant cousins in both Nonno’s and Nonna’s families, we want to learn the language and see what it is like to live as Italians in modern Italy, we like to travel and experience different cultures. Even if we aren’t successful at achieving these purposes, we love Italy and enjoy every moment here, so there is no chance we will be disappointed. I am grateful to God for giving me a wife who is beautiful, clever, adaptable and willing to jump into my dreams wholeheartedly.